Posted
by
timothy
on Wednesday September 01, 2010 @01:19AM
from the sticking-it-to-the-phone-companies dept.

jj110888 writes "CyanogenMod has just been updated to version 6.0, bringing Android Open Source Project 2.2 (Froyo) to several devices. This fork includes enchantments to many of the built-in apps, Ad-hoc network connectivity, OpenVPN support, Bluetooth HID, Incognito browsing, extensive control over audio and UI elements, and more found in the extensive CHANGELOG. The CyanogenMod team uses an instance of Google's gerrit tool for code review and patch submission, helping make this former backport of Android 1.6 to T-Mobile's G1 into thriving development for the G1/MyTouch/MyTouch 1.2, Droid, Nexus One, HTC Aria, HTC Desire, HTC Evo 4G (minus 4G and HDMI output), Droid Incredible, and MyTouch Slide. HTC Hero (including Droid Eris) are coming soon for 6.0, with Samsung Galaxy S devices expected to be supported in 6.1."

One day, kids will be in awe reading fantasy novels about our golden age of computer junk.

Unfortunately kids these days spend more time texting and less time reading. Fortunately, we'll be able to look at all that old junk at the Computer Junk Museum in the Mega-Costco, between the boat and forklift isles, near the Starbucks and Brawndo machine.

i'm concerned about bugs, intentional or not, that would allow someone access to my voice calls or other personal data... how feasible are those situations when using one of these 3rd party mobile operating systems rather than the one supplied directly by the mobile vendor with the device?

They end up patching most vulnerabilities faster than the handset makers, but there is always the chance of users not understanding root and not reading the permissions their apps require. One of the many good things about android though is that it shows you what the app wants wants before installing, if you don't read/know what you're installing, who's really to blame at that point?

One of the many good things about android though is that it shows you what the app wants wants before installing

Yes, but without the ability to deny some of those rights, it's not very useful. Case in point: couple days ago I wanted to install a simple music app. It wanted GPS access and internet access. Fuck that, I didn't install the app but I'd much rather block those two things.

Yes, but without the ability to deny some of those rights, it's not very useful. Case in point: couple days ago I wanted to install a simple music app. It wanted GPS access and internet access. Fuck that, I didn't install the app but I'd much rather block those two things.

I agree. It could be useful if you could install an app while denying it some of the rights it wants. Of course that could make the app unstable and useless, but at least you had the option to do so and it was your own free choice.

It could be useful if you could install an app while denying it some of the rights it wants. Of course that could make the app unstable and useless, but at least you had the option to do so and it was your own free choice.

I agree in principle, but I think this would make life suck for developers. Would you really want to deal with the inevitable people saying "I paid for this app and it doesn't work" when the only reason your app doesn't work is because these same people didn't grant it the necessary rights? Supporting software is hard enough as is; we don't need to make it even easier for well-intentioned—but not technically-minded—folks to break things.

By the same token, Google really ought to include a provision to make the application request permission to do certain things after it's been installed. Such as placing phone calls. Most applications that ask for that permission do so in order to allow you to select a phone number from the application and place it as a convenience. They don't generally need the permission all the time, so for something like that making it ask each time is probably reasonable and not going to cause too much trouble for anybo

Yes it is probably inevitable, but it could be greatly lessened by info dialogs to inform the user that the feature they are trying to access is only possible if they allow it to, say, access contacts, or whatever it is. Some apps do this to a degree already, and notify you when your mobile connection is switched off for example, while others just sit there doing nothing (bad idea). If it can't sync, it should tell the user why it can't sync.

It could be useful if you could install an app while denying it some of the rights it wants. Of course that could make the app unstable and useless, but at least you had the option to do so and it was your own free choice.

I agree in principle, but I think this would make life suck for developers. Would you really want to deal with the inevitable people saying "I paid for this app and it doesn't work" when the only reason your app doesn't work is because these same people didn't grant it the necessary rights? Supporting software is hard enough as is; we don't need to make it even easier for well-intentioned—but not technically-minded—folks to break things.

Sorry, but this is how it works on iOS. Your app downloads fine. If it tries to use the GPS the phone prompts you for permission. If it tries to message you, the phone prompts you to allow messaging. etc. Works great, maybe google will copy this too.

Exactly - better that you're at least informed, if it had said nothing you'd be blissfully unaware that your music app was tracking your position and accessing the web. And if you don't want it to do those things, mail the developer and give them some useful feedback (I would have bought/used your app except...) and maybe they'll explain what the usage is, or even offer a version with those things removed. That's the beauty of the system, you have a lot of visibility of what's going on.

Have you seen how buggy vendor-firmware is these days? I'd wager that Cyanogenmod actually has less bugs than the original firmware on most of these devices. While I don't use CyanogenMod myself, I'm using a ROM which is nearly entirely based on it, just with some junk ripped out and tweaked for better performance, and I must say, the stuff they've baked into the kernel is fantastic (things like full Bluetooth HID keyboard support)... And while it does introduce some bugs, there are none known that could ca

I, fortunately, have the Nexus One and get firmware supplied from Google. Their versions are pretty tight; the only bug I noticed was with large SD transfers rebooting the phone, but that went away after I got a new device, so it may have possibly been a hardware issue as well.

While I appreciate all of the work Steve and his partners (Team Douche:p) have put into making a very viable alternative to vendor-supplied firmware (especially on more restricted devices), it hasn't been reliable enough to make m

Not without at least an hour or two of activity (i.e. screen on, radios active, CPU grinding)... unless you've got a process keeping the phone awake in the background all the time.

You should check your Battery History in the INFO menu (dial *#*#4636#*#*)... if "Running" (listed under "Other Usage" with "Since last unplugged" set) is higher than the amount of time you were actively using your phone, it's probably not going into standby properly when you turn it off. If that's the case, you should check under

i'm concerned about bugs, intentional or not, that would allow someone access to my voice calls or other personal data... how feasible are those situations when using one of these 3rd party mobile operating systems rather than the one supplied directly by the mobile vendor with the device?

You don't know it but what you are indirectly implying is that open source community developed systems could harbor more undisclosed vulnerabilities due to less peer review, either accidentally or, a via more disturbing proposition: that someone may masquerade as a coder in a community project to hide something in plain sight (certainly possible: http://underhanded.xcott.com/ [xcott.com]) obtaining sudden pwnership of thousands of phones (last I heard CyanogenMOD was on 30k Android phones now likely many more).

It's good to be concerned about bugs. The question is: do forks add bugs or remove them? If you start asking which code has been audited and which hasn't, you're going to realize the same question is going to apply to every single phone's firmware. You don't know about Froyo's quality, but then unless you work at Google or Apple, you don't know anything about Android or IOS quality either.

You shouldn't really talk when you obviously don't know anything about the subject of conversation. The number of phones that Cyanogen supports is not "dwindling" it is actually booming. Up through CM 5.0 he only supported 3 phones (G1, MyTouch, Nexus one) but with the development of 6.0 he recruited rom developers for all the other phones listed above. This just happened a few months ago and this article is discussing the fruits of their labor. Additionally, the encrypted bootloader you were mentioning

Wow. You should really inform yourself better before telling other people they're spreading FUD - and I'd recommend looking for information in places OTHER than blogs.

The Droid X and Droid 2 bootloaders have NOT been cracked, they're still encrypted, keeping you from booting a kernel such as the one included in Cyanogenmod. While read/write access to the system partition and a working recovery are a good step in the right direction, Droid X/2 development is stuck at exactly the same spot where Milestone modders have been stuck for the better part of a year now.

True custom ROMs like Cyanogenmod are NOT possible without bootloader access!

The FUD about the Droid X having been cracked wide open is pretty much what blogs like Droid Life have been spreading all over the internet, and it's just wrong. No custom kernel, no custom ROM. You can heavily modify the existing ROMs, but you MUST keep the kernel that Motorola signed for your device. Note that the developers who made Clockworkmod on the Droid X possible state explicitly that ROMs with custom kernels aren't possible with their recovery...

Remember the Milestone alarm-clock fiasco? The phone would just not wake up properly when it was time to sound an alarm, resulting in the phone being completely useless as an alarm clock. This was a kernel bug that was left unfixed for MONTHs, until the.36 bugfix release of Android 2.1 was pushed just weeks ago... the only way to fix it was by flashing a different kernel. Luckily it was discovered that the Telus version of 2.1 didn't have this bug, and that the kernel from that version could be flashed onto any Milestone due to them all using the same signature. With full bootloader access, custom kernels without this bug (like they've been available for the bootloader-unlocked Droid all along) would have been usable right away, and the problem would have been fixed by the community more or less right away.

And that's just one example of why it's important to have full bootloader access for flashing custom kernels. There are many more... like being able to create a ROM like CyanogenMod for the device. Many of the tweaks built into Cyanogenmod are kernel-level changes, and while you may be able to get somewhere by loading kernel modules at runtime (like the overclocking module for the Milestone), you'll have a tough time replicating all the functions of a full custom kernel that way.

Like I probably mentioned in my earlier post, even HTC is moving in this direction (albeit slowly), with some sort of runtime-protection of the system partition that's apparently uncrackable so far on the Desire and IIRC some other phones too (Legend?).

You are utterly mistaken. If the Desire is as locked down as you say it is then explain the fully functional CM 6.0 that runs on it including the custom kernel. Check out the XDA Desire forum for some details and then hopefully you can come back better informed. Also, AOSP builds for the Droid X are coming with custom kernels. I find if funny that below you posted a quote to try and make your point that custom kernels wont be happening but you tried to completely ignored half of the quote by bolding jus

You seem to be misinterpreting some of my posts, as well as adding things that I myself never actually wrote.

1. About the Desire, please try to understand what I'm saying: Cyanogenmod runs perfectly well on the Desire. I'm using a ROM that's mostly based on CyanogenMod, custom kernel and all. The lockdown that has been implemented by HTC on the Desire ONLY limits writing to the system partition at runtime (i.e. with Android fully booted). It's still possible to write to the system partition vi

I didn't use the "you have no idea what you're talking about" argument. I said "you simply don't know enough" and I stand by that based on the content of your posts. I have seen an AOSP rom running on the Droid X and was told it will have a modified kernel. Time will tell if that is the case or not. I'm sure if they have it working everyone will know soon enough. As for the Desire, if you have a custom kernel running on the device then it should be simple to have write permission to/system after bootin

I implore you: Please inform yourself about the situation with the Desire before telling me I just don't know what I'm talking about. Try these links (just the first two Google results for "read write system desire"):

The proper response to that is of course to advertise widely and loudly which phones are locked down, and which aren't. People who want an open system will buy the unlocked phones, and those manufacturers will be rewarded with extra sales.

I really don't see the point for manufacturers to lock their phones like this. For networks, I can understand, but when I buy a phone without a contract, I should own it, without any limitations. If we want high-end, fully unlocked/unlockable phones, we need to make sure there's a market for them. Manufacturers would be stupid to deny that market.

I and many other people have been shouting about the Motorola situation for weeks, and nobody seems to care. They're still buying Motorola phones like there's no tomorrow (no doubt fueled by the memory of the fully open Droid 1 and the false hope that the bootloaders on the Droid X and Droid 2 will be cracked soon), without heeding the consequences. If Motorola doesn't realize that its update polices and lockdown are costing it sales, they'll keep going in this direction and other manufacturers will follow.

i have been listening to the stories about the droid 2 and X re: being locked down too tight to load a custom ROM. it made me glad that i had a droid 1 that was more open. i wasn't sure if i would find a suitable phone to upgrade to when the time came.

i just did a warranty return on my droid 1 (headphone jack had a short) and was given a new in the box droid 2. i hate it. the custom camera, gallery, alarm clock, virtual keyboard, etc. all suck hard compared to vanilla android. and now i am screwed b

For your sake I hope that Milamber is right in that someone will find a way around the locked bootloader on the Droid X/2... but going on my experiences with the Milestone, that could be more difficult than anticipated. Basically Droid X development is now stuck at the same spot the Milestone devs have been stuck in for months now.

Switching out large parts of the system is great and all (you should be able to switch to stock versions of the apps that are bothering you - camera, gallery, alarm clock etc.), b

what is really crazy to me is that in every way the droid 2 seems like a regression from the droid 1. it has flash and wifi AP, but other than that motorola has seemingly tried to "make it theirs" as far as software and they know less about usability than the android team. there are some appalling UI choices that were made on the phone, and i just don't have the patience to replace a shitty implementation bit-by-bit.

luckily i haven't mailed back my droid 1 yet so i have a bargaining chip with them. i

Hmmm, you could, of course, just sell the Droid 2 and use the cash to buy a new bootloader-unlocked phone, such as the Epic 4G... or a used Droid and pocket the rest for a new set of headphones to use with that headphone jack;)

Then again, that would send the wrong message to Verizon and Motorola, making them think you actually like the locked-down, Motoblurred Droid 2...

One can only hope that the Epic is as bad as every other Samsung phone I have owned or known someone to own. The first one I had locked up all the time (not Android, it was a flip phone years ago.) My friend has a Samsung Moment that somehow at random decides to report that the battery has gone from 100% to 15% of a charge. I have another friend who's Samsung had rebooting issues.

I've decided to stay clear of Samsung until they get their hardware in line.

Not having owned any Samsung Android hardware myself (the flip-phone my girlfriend has is fine - build quality is decent and the software is too simple to be a problem), I can't really say anything to that - but the keyboard on the Epic 4G looks fantastic...

Indeed, I was beyond pissed when I found out how locked down the Backflip was, which is a shame because I liked the form factor. I ended up ditching it within the first couple weeks and replacing it with a Nexus One. Not a perfect phone, and at times I miss the physical keyboard, but it's quite a bit less locked up, and I can completely unlock it if I so choose.

But in general I think that hardware manufacturers ought to be required to be more forthcoming about things like that. Sony for instance ought to

As a Droid Incredible owner, I'm pretty pissed off that Android 2.2 is so many months old and there's STILL no official build available for my device. Why can't I just go to a magic URL like google.com/android/2.2, then download a supported ROM for my device, and then install the new OS just like downloading a new version of Ubuntu for a PC?

So why should they build, test and support new roms for every different Android device out there? They've got enough on their plate developing the reference OS itself. You should be asking Verizon, or at least HTC.

With Ubuntu, a lot of people chipped in to write and make available many different device drivers so that a huge range of hardware could be supported. Phones too require different device drivers - but on phones, many of those drivers are still proprietary. Cyanogen (among others) is the best recourse we've got.

But for actual solutions - well, you could insist on buying only phones with minimal vendor changes from vanilla Android, thus reducing the amount of work needed for porting the latest OS. Vendors could devote more effort to supporting older hardware, since it's clear it's a big issue with customers [gizmodo.com]. From Google's pov, they've said [engadget.com] they're working on separating as much as possible from the base OS, so that the cooler stuff can be updated independently.

Only other "solution" I can think of is for Google to hold off releasing new versions until major vendors complete porting it to their older hardware. But all that would do is disadvantage Google's own customers to no purpose, just so that other vendors' customers don't know what they're missing, not to mention reducing the valuable feedback Google needs to work on the next version. Might as well go to an annual cycle and change their name to Apple 2.0.

With Ubuntu, a lot of people chipped in to write and make available many different device drivers so that a huge range of hardware could be supported. Phones too require different device drivers - but on phones, many of those drivers are still proprietary.

How do vendors distribute proprietary device drivers linked to the GPL Linux kernel?

As a Droid Incredible owner, I'm pretty pissed off that Android 2.2 is so many months old and there's STILL no official build available for my device. Why can't I just go to a magic URL like google.com/android/2.2, then download a supported ROM for my device, and then install the new OS just like downloading a new version of Ubuntu for a PC?

But you can, with cyanogenmod. CM is one of the only things that is fighting to end fragmentation.

As a Droid Incredible owner, I'm pretty pissed off that Android 2.2 is so many months old and there's STILL no official build available for my device. Why can't I just go to a magic URL like google.com/android/2.2, then download a supported ROM for my device, and then install the new OS just like downloading a new version of Ubuntu for a PC?

Heh. I'm equally angry that nobody has released final-draft ROMs for the acclaimed wireless N standard. It's supposed to be an easier one-time task than porting Android every 6 months to a plethora of incompatible carrier hardware here in the US. That's specially true because final-N is supposedly a "virtually no-change" update to the draft-N standards that we bought for years. If even that small a promise at face value (namely NOT saying "oh, there was really no change" then what is my hope that buying thi

You can actually do just that. The Froyo source has been available from Day 1 on the AOSP website. You need to realize that Android is still in its infancy and similar to when linux was in its infancy if you wanted to run a different version on your hardware you need to be prepared to modify it, write new drivers, and work out some bugs. This is exactly what the devs do for most of the phones. I have been running 2.2 on my Hero for months even though HTC has said they will never release it for the Hero.

This is partly why google is changing some things in the design of android. It will reduce how much devices can differentiate their interfaces - but it is meant to ensure that when a new version comes out ALL the android phones can get it immediately.

I fully understand why they are going there, though I can also see the downsides.... interesting times ahead.

At least you'll have 2.2 eventually. For those of us with a Hero or Eris, this is the only way we get FroYo. A semi-working build was available within hours of the FroYo source code release, and now stable versions abound. But the Eris is already end-of-life. One day your incredible will be, too.

You also could have done some reasearch instead of running to your phone net supplier typed in as us american the google webshop and bought a nexus one.It speaks legends that now the nexus one is sold over the dev channel worldwide, google is selling so many of them that they have a supply problem, and before when it was only available in the US no one bought it except for a few.

You're not missing much with Android 2.2 being late. I've got it on my droid and I'd almost consider going back to 2.1. The icons routinely disappear off the screen (I just have to swipe to another screen to get them back, but it's an annoyance), and Pandora (or any other streaming music service) is affected by having every other song come through in low quality. All for what? Flash? They claim speed increases, but I haven't noticed any.

This is a great ROM, and the whole crowd that put it together does deserve applause.

The only detractor is stability with smaller issues. There is an 'experimental' branch, which is essentially alpha like code, and the stable branch is more like a constantly moving, fairly mature beta.

Part of this, of course, is the speed with which this whole environment is moving. Just when the Cyanogenmod team release a ROM, it seems that a whole whack of changes manifest upstream, with the goal of a whole new Google branded release. So, naturally, the compulsion is to move to that newer codebase..

I'm hoping that for a while at least, Google doesn't fork for another release branch. Hell, there are already issues with phone manufacturers and the fragmentation in the Android market as a result. So, maybe it should be.. oh, I don't know, a YEAR before there is another fork and release on the Google side?

Perhaps then, people will be able to fork 6.1 or 6.2 of Cyanogenmod, and spent about 20 sub-releases just on stability issues.

All and all though, that would just be icing on the cake. And what a sweet cake it is!

I have been wishing for OpenVPN support on my iPhone for some time now. The idea that you'll 'control your whole life' through your phone is so hollow until you have 'secure' tunnels to your resources. The person who put the effort in to get OpenVPN working on android has my respect. Good work!

Uh, I assume the GP was referring to the fact that the previous user described the VPN component as a 'killer app'.

I consider myself a pretty nerdy Android user - I'm probably in the 1% of Android users who a) actually know what OpenVPN is and b) would actually use it.

I sure would like to have OpenVPN but I certainly can't be bothered figuring out how to mod my phone to get it. So I think the GP was merely saying that for the vast, vast majority of people, it is pretty irrelevant when compared to something

Ah but to many it *is* a killer app. A blackberry-killer app, to be specific. Without a good set of VPN tools, Android phones are destined to be glorified social-media beepers. The only way to be taken seriously in the business world is if you take the business world seriously, and the first thing a phone needs from that perspective is security. While you are right that consumer handsets have little to no use for VPN tools, corporate handsets have EVERY use for them.

As a user of a Desire ROM that's based largely on CyanogenMod (and there are many of these), I'd like to thank the team for the work they've done. The enhancements they've added are truly enchanting (hrhr), and add a lot of value to an already pretty great product.

There are issues, of course, but largely it's just a vanilla Android version with all the enhancements Google should have built into Android from the beginning. And that's awesome:)

Cyanogen is a great ROM, especially for older phones like G1/Dream which is already abandoned and doesn't have an official 2.x ROM. It had some really neat features like the WiFi tethering or additional launcher screens. However I found it to be bleeding-edge and somewhat unstable. For example, the 1.5 ROM had a battery monitor that actually drained the battery because of a bug in the code:)Some features like AWB launcher are feature-rich but look incomplete and beta-quality. The 2.1 ROM for G1/Dream added

You can boot Ubuntu on a Nexus One. And Win95, should you be masochistic enough to try it.
I also run PSX4DROID as a playstation emulator!

The only Ubuntu/Nexus installations I can find are running in a chroot, like the Debian that grandparent mentions. Win95 wouldn't run natively anyway.

Android devices are fairly limited compared to most computers, so I would like to run a real distro, instead of layers of emulation. In fact, native binary applications should run faster than the bytecode apps in Android.

The only Ubuntu/Nexus installations I can find are running in a chroot, like the Debian that grandparent mentions. Win95 wouldn't run natively anyway.

There is a tutorial at http://www.irregular-expression.com/ [irregular-expression.com] for installing Debian on a Nexus One that runs directly on the hardware, no chroot. The only catch is that you need a PC hooked up to the device in order to initiate booting. So the only thing that is missing to be usable in the field is a bootloader that is able to boot an alternative OS. Or you could try to keep the device running without rebooting, but I guess that Debian without chroot is a bit too power hungry for that.

I wonder the same thing about Toshiba Dynabook AC100. It is an Nvidia Tegra 250 based netbook running Android, and to my great surprise it is available in at least one consumer electronics chain here in Finland (Tekniset).

The Tegra seems like a relatively open platform, in that there are plenty of Linux resources and a Gentoo installation guide available, at least for the devkit. But I wonder if any of the consumer versions are similarly updateable. Kernel upgrades seem like a hassle in any case, since t

Don't forget that you had Froyo as alternate OS for the N900 before it was available officially for any Android phone (even before the Nexus One). Still no full functionality because the parts that Nokia didn't opened on it, but is actively being worked for fixing that. Nitdroid was a different android fork, and was targetted to one smartphone only (and the N8x0 tablets).There are a few newer Android phones with better hardware specs, but still the N900 is an impressive piece of hardware, and Maemo is nothi

Less than 10 could be seen as "few" compared with the amount of android phones or devices out there. And resistive touchscreen could be seen as something negative or positive. Its very responsive, and enable things that capacitive ones can't, so is up to your preferences and way of using of those devices, some could use to have finer grained input (you can write like in paper, even sign with a stylus), or being sensitive to different grades of pressure and being able to do things like this one [fonehome.co.uk].

I'm running CM6 RC3 on the Eris, and the phone has never felt snappier. It has revived (by today's standards) a dated platform. The fine folks at XDA developers have put together a ROM with WiFi tether, over/underclocking for improved battery life with increased speed, etc. Great stuff.

The Cyanogen mod ROM images do NOT contain some of the stock apps (after a C&D letter from Google). They say you can back up and use the versions you received with your phone. But to back up the apps, you appear to have to root the phone. To root the phone, you have to downgrade the ROM. Will I be able to get updates to the built-in apps, or am I stuck with the oldest 2009 versions of those built-in apps on the newest Cyanogen-installed Android ROM?

None of that is neccesary. For a while I dispaired that Google was going the way of Apple, but they have since worked with Cyanogen and released all the apps as a seperate installable.zip file. The only difference is that you need to flash two zips instead of 1.
A company working WITH a mod guy to solve his problems and let him do his thing!? What is the world coming to.
I've tried a million different ROMs, and Cyanogen is teh BOM in my opinion. I've still got an old Magic (Sapphire, G2, or whatever they keep naming the same device), and every time a new version of Cyanogen comes out it's like getting a new handset.
It's awesome.;-)

Mod parent up. I currently am running the latest Sapphire ROM on my Droid (shamefully, I have not yet tried Cyanogen). They had the exact same "issue"--a C&D was sent stating they could not bundle the stock Google apps with their ROM. However, instead of essentially killing the project by doing this, they provided an alternative--a separate update.zip file that you would install after the main ROM, which placed the stock Google apps back on your device. I am happy to see a company doing something li

Google can get away with this because OEMs/carriers get Android for free. If Apple or MS do this, AT&T, other carriers, HTC/Samsung etc. would cry foul. It might even be in the contract somewhere that they can't facilitate unlocking/jailbreaking.

You're worried about the wrong thing, entirely -- you have to root your phone FIRST before you even start worrying about Cyanogenmod. Thus, after this point, it's trivial to get the new proprietary Google apps (they're in a separate zip file you flash), and Cyanogen will release updates for them from time to time -- just keep an eye out.

I tried a port of CM6 release candidate on my HTC Kaiser (AT&T Tilt). It was slow, but to be fair the Kaiser was designed for WinMo 6.1, something like three years ago. I got the impression that CM6 is a thing of beauty on an adequate phone. The OpenVPN support was great, if you use that. I am using a more stock Froyo right now, a better fit for this old phone. I won't quote w0mprat, but I agree with the sentiment.

Recently, I decided I wanted to ditch my iPod Touch. I'd really like a good quality Android device to replace it. So far the only decent Android devices that I know of are phones. (Yes, there are non-phone Android devices, but they often lack critical pieces, like the App Market.)

If I were to buy an Android phone (say, a Nexus One), and have no intention of using it as a phone (no phone calls, no text messages), can I use use all the other Android functionality without a carrier, just wifi? I've done a lot of Googling but haven't yet come across a definitive yes or no. I'd preferably like to hear someone who is already doing this.

(And yes, I already know I will pay a lot more than I did for the iPod Touch.)

Any other (Android) is not really Android. It's some crippled crap corporate malware. CyanogenMod is awesome: Wifi tethering, fast speed, uncrippled features. I would not have an Android phone if there wasn't a Cyanogenmod.

CM won't, but someone on XDA Devs probably will, by standing on the shoulders of the CM code.
P.S. Swype's available in the market! I prefer SlideIT though. Either way, you can put it on any Android phone.

Swype isn't likely to ever be available via the market. They've said as much in the past. They don't have the resouces/don't want to provide end user support. So shy of Google paying for a license or agreeing to support it for a chunk of the revenue, it's not going to happen.

Oh, my mistake. It's freely available though, if you google. Mobilism.org has it, for example. My point is that you're not dependent on Samsung for it, and also that alternatives (that I think are better) such as SlideIT are also available.

Is it "freely" available, and is it officially supported on all Android devices?

Swype's business model is OEM licensing. I'm not sure who they're partnered with, but it didn't come on my phone. I found a.apk online and installed it, and I absolutely love it! I would have no problem whatsoever paying $10 or even $20 for it. The problem is that there's no way to buy Swype unless your phone already came with it.

Well, yes, if you go check the release notes it'll tell you exactly what doesn't work. It'll be a small list. On current version I think there's a bug that occasionally prevents phone from sleeping, draining battery. It'll be fixed.
CM ROMs do NOT include Sense UI -they are "clean" Android. Personally I like Sense, which is why I'm using the AuraxTSense 7.1 ROM from XDA Devs on my HTC Desire. It's lovely. Now the CM code is out, they basically set a gold-standard baseline for others to tinker with.
Seriously, the community ROMs tend to be more stable than the OEM ones - and they fix bugs, rather than ignore them.

Cool... I just got my 3G Slide last week too! Just finally received a USB cable though, so haven't had time to jailbreak / update it yet.

A bit annoyed with T-Mobile, since they've been promising OTA updates to Android 2.x for their MyTouch phones "just next month" since I bought a MyTouch 3G for my wife in *March* 2010. If you follow the blogs, they're *still* saying that. Yeah it's a moving target and all, but it's really a lot like they're just saying whatever it takes to keep people buying their curre

The T-Mobile myTouch 3G Slide is known as the HTC Espresso. I've been running CM6 on mine for weeks now using the nightly builds produced by their build-bot. There are a few outstanding issues on the device that may give you pause, however:

1. Bluetooth audio is nonfunctional for phone calls
2. Wifi connectivity issues arise in certain circumstances
3. The "FN" and "CAPS" lights on the hardware keyboard do not light up when their respective buttons are pressed

Seconded... it is not a fork people! Unless you want to call all modifications done for different providers (O2, Vodafone, T-Mobile, Verizon) and by different hardware vendors (HTC, Motorola, who else?) "forks", it's not a fork!

It'd be calling an Ubuntu installation that has some extra programs installed and some files in/etc modified a fork...

I must have missed where I declared I achieve true lasting spiritual happiness from changing my background or spraying graffiti on walls.

The fact that you couldn't even change the background the phone uses is just a basic example of how iOS treats its users like they are dumb drooling idiots who are lucky to successfully plug the device into the wall. It is such a basic and trivial feature that it speaks volumes that you can't uses. Seriously, how fucking stupid do your users have to be if they can't be tr